Many people have
stated that they do not believe that a child wrote the letters. But
their statements really have nothing to do with the handwriting.
It's just people voicing an unwillingness to accept or believe that an
adult would use a child that way - or that the terrorist would risk
using a child that way. These are beliefs and have nothing to do
with facts.

What does the evidence
say?

Here is one of the
anthrax envelopes:

Here are some children's
writing samples as found on the Web:

Letter #1

Letter #2

Letter #3

Letter #1 is on
lined paper, but it still shows a couple interesting things: (1)
the J in June is not crossed, and (2) the way the capital R is drawn.
(A lot of people think the "extender" on the Rs are drawn too long and
they feel that indicates something or other.) They apparently notice
this because of some Bangladesh protest signs. Here is a comparison:

I do not yet have
many examples from Kid's letters, but they seem consistent with the Rs
in the anthrax letters, which are very different from the Rs in the Bangali
protest signs. Most kids seem to write Rs with the extender coming
from the intersection of the vertical line and the lower part of the loop,
but not all. Letter #1 shows an R drawn the way it was done in the
anthrax letters.

One source tells
me that the R's in the anthrax letters are simply the way that R's are
drawn in American public schools, and the R's on the Bangladesh signs are
the way R's are drawn in Catholic schools:

Letter #2, in the
examples of children's handwiting, is a good illustration of the tendency
to write on a downward slope when not writing on lined paper. It
also shows that the capital E is drawn with the center line of equal length
to the upper and lower lines (as in the anthrax letters), which is not
the way I (as an adult) would do it.

Letter #3 shows
that some kids do cross the J. If examined closely, it also
shows that the lines are wavy because the writer is accustomed to writing
on lined paper.

All three letters
show how children write capital letters larger than lower case letters.

Letters #1 and #2
have examples of writing in all capitals, and in neither case did the writer
write the first letters of the sentences larger than the other letters.
Why? Because in this situation it is the equivalent of SHOUTING.
The examples do not show how children would write in all capitals
if simply told to do so - without shouting. An adult would amost
certainly write with all capital letters of the same height. I know
that's how I'd do it. But what would a child do?

Letter #4

Letter #5

The two letters
above were picked from my very small collection of less than a dozen letters.
Letter #4 shows that putting dashes between the numbers of a date is something
that a child might do, but in this case she didn't put a zero in front
of the single digits in the date. She also clearly demonstrates how
her writing becomes wavy when she's writing on unlined paper. Letter
#5 is another case where a child crosses the J and writes in a way that
slopes downward on the left.

Letter #4 also shows
that the number 1 is written without serifs and the capital I is written
with serifs. I have no examples of a writer
doing exactly the opposite, except for the writer of the anthax letters.
That peculiarity in the handwriting could be a key to identifying the writer.
The
writer has a very unusual habit of writing "I"s without serifs and "1"s
with serifs.

Another odd writing
habit seems to have occurred mainly when addressing the envelope to Tom
Brokaw. It appears on no other available envelope or letter to anywhere
near the same degree.

Note that the writer
had a habit of pausing for a moment at the end of completing a stroke before
removing the pen from the paper. Such pauses result in ball-shaped
ends to the strokes. This seems to indicate that the writer was being
very careful as he laboriously copied the address, perhaps glancing at
the original before removing the pen from the paper. He was
carefully drawing letters stroke by stroke, often pausing before lifting
the pen to begin a new stroke.

He also draws Ns
and Ys with 3 separate strokes and Ms and Ws with 4 separate strokes, where
most people would write Ys with 2 strokes and Ms with 2 strokes and Ws
with 1 stroke.

Like so many other
things about the handwriting, this, too, indicates the writing of a child.
And the child must have been a fast learner, since he virtually dropped
that habit after addressing this one envelope. Although we can't
be certain because the letters to Dan Rather and Peter Jennings were discarded,
it could indicate that the Tom Brokaw letter was the first envelope he
addressed, and the media envelopes were probably addressed before the media
letters were written.

The writing on
the Tom Brokaw letter is about twice the size of the lettering on the Daschle
letter. But since the width of the pen strokes is not doubled, it
was clearly just a change in the way the letters were written. It wasn't
magnification by the copy machine.

The changes in writing
size between the two mailings also seems to indicate that an adult may
not have been doing the writing. It seems unplanned.

Another odd thing
about the letters is the way they were cropped unevenly with a scissors.
No two letters are the same size. Letter #1 seems to confirm,
however, that standard 8-1/2 x 11 copy paper was used, since three of its
sides were left mostly untouched.

The most likely
reason the bottoms of the letters were cut off was to make the paper size
fit better into a small envelope after it had been folded with the pharmaceutical
fold.

What's needed for
a better analysis of the handwriting is more examples. There seem
to be very few on the Internet. Most letters from kids on the Internet
have been converted into fonts, and most of the rest seem to be from older
children. Examples must be from the right age or they are of little
value for comparison and analysis.

Letters to Santa
from a post office would be an ideal source in several ways: there would
be lots of them, and they would be addressed to a place where no harm is
done if the address is shown on this web site.

This page is intended
to be an analysis of the evidence. As far as I can tell, there is
no evidence that the letters were written by an adult - much less a foreign-born
adult.

Nevertheless, people
argue that a foreigner who is accustomed to writing Arabic right to left
might write at an angle when writing in English. But no one can provide
examples. And my experience with the Japanese language says that
it's not a valid argument.

People argue that
the writer could be writing with his wrong hand. But as stated elsewhere
on this site, experts totally discount that theory. When a person
writes in an unaccustomed way, it can usually be easily detected by abnormal
spacing between letters and words. Plus, when most people write with
their wrong hand, the writing looks like they have palsy. It's very
shakey.

People argue that
the writer could be a mental case who is writing in an unusual way because
of his pent up frustrations. Perhaps. But I don't have any
evidence of that. And that analysis seems to be based upon the context
rather than the actual handwriting.

People argue that
the writer could be an adult who was picked by the terrorist because he
has the mental capabilities of a six year old. Possibly. Time
will tell. But nothing in the handwriting clearly indicates that.

And most of these
arguments fall apart when one compares the handwriting on the envelopes
to the handwriting on the letters. It's clearly the same handwriting
by the same person, but the writer only has a serious problem writing in
a straight line when writing the envelopes. He writes very straight
in the letters. If anything, he might write at a slight upward angle.
Here is a comparison:

Why? The best
guess could be that with a small envelope he has trouble judging the amount
of room he has to complete what he has to write. It's a common problem
with children's writing. When it looks like they might be running
out of room, they start directing their writing toward where they have
the most space - toward the farthest corner - the lower right corner.
But with a large sheet of paper, he has plenty of room and doesn't concern
himself with running out of space.

Modified
Uncial

On June 3, 2004,
while browsing the Net, I stumbled upon a web site by "Brother
Jonathan" where he explains things. He says:

The lettering style itself
would seem most curious, but is quite simply the
modified uncial style of lettering taught in American kindergarten
and early first grade classes, using only all upper case letters.

He goes into considerable
detail about why children are first taught to write in all capitals, making
the first letter of sentences and proper nouns larger than other letters.
And he adds:

This would show the author
of the letters went through kindergarten [in 2000-2001], and in the first
weeks of September of [2001] when the letters were written had just started
first grade but still had not yet learned the lower case letters.

Finally, he concludes
that the writer of the letters was a boy who was about 6 years old when
he wrote the letters.

Is it true that
children entering first grade all write this way? It's definitely
something that will be checked further.

Zeroes
and O's

Yet another observation
made on March 12, 2003, seems to confirm that someone other than the
anthrax mailer wrote the anthrax letters - but the "proof" is very
much open to interpretation. An examination of the date on the media
letter versus the text of the media letter seems to clearly indicate that
the
date was not written by the same person who wrote the text.
It has mainly to do with the way the zeroes and O's were written, but also
with the writing of the number 1.

Here's a comparison
of the zeroes and O's and 1's in the date and the text of the media letter:

People do not normally
draw a zero different from drawing an O.

Notice that when
the date was written, the circle that forms the first zero is barely closed
at the top and the second is clearly left unconnected.

But the person who
wrote the text of the letter did things very differently with the
alphabetical character O. He not only completes ever single O, on
all three O's in the text he went past the point were the circle would
be complete and drew over part of the letter. He did the same thing
on many of the O's and zeroes when addressing the envelopes.

The zeros in the
date are also more round while the O's and zeroes in the text and on the
envelopes are much more oval in shape.

Combined with the
fact that the 1's in the date show shorter serifs than the 1's on the media
envelopes, it seems a near certainty that the date was not written by the
person who wrote the text of the letters and addressed the envelopes.

Unfortunately, the
second letter does not show anything anywhere near as clearly. Here's
a comparison of the date on the first letter and the date on the second
letter:

It's a much smaller
sample to work with, but it appears that the writer of the text of the
first letter wrote all of the second letter - and copied the date
from the first letter. It can't be proven, but that's the way it
appears to me.

In other words,
it appears one person wrote the date on the first letter but someone else
wrote the text of that letter, the entire second letter including the date,
and also addressed all the envelopes.

The second letter
was apparently written without any pressures of time. While the media
letter showed "doodling" where the writer drew over many characters, there
is no sign of that sort of thing on the Senate letter. The
O's are also more round and less oval on the second letter. One can
assume that the culprit had time to think about what sort of mistakes he
may have made on the first mailing, and took precautions to avoid such
mistakes on the second mailing when he was not so pressed for time.

Why was the date
on the first letter written by a different person?

Was the date simply
added as an afterthought? Or was the letter already written and the
envelopes already addressed when 9-11 occurred? There's no evidence
either way. But if the letter was already written and the envelopes
already addressed when 9-11 occurred, that opens up a lot of implications.
It seems a near certainty that the culprit had anthrax available prior
to 9-11. I've speculated that his "Plan
A" may have been benign and harmless, and the media mailing was a hastily
constructed "Plan B" after 9-11. But now I'm thinking: maybe
not. Maybe "Plan A" was his original plan all along, and all 9-11
did was speed things up and force the culprit to use unrefined anthrax.
I hope not. I shudder to think what would have happened if the first
mailing had been with refined anthrax to five different media organizations.
But it's all just speculation.

One has to assume
that the culprit is the person who added the date. The writer of
the text may have been no longer available, or the culprit may have worried
that the primary writer would mess up the letter in some way forcing the
culprit to start again from scratch.

Do I believe that
the letters were written by a child? It's unimportant what I believe.
What's important is what the evidence says.

HOAX
LETTERS

On Oct. 13, 2001,
the St.
Petersburg Times printed a picture of the envelope for a hoax letter
that appears to have been postmarked on Oct. 8, 2001 (or is that a 6 or
a 2?). The envelope illustrates a great deal about handwriting, and
the article says that the Post Office investigated over 80 hoax anthrax
mailings per year prior to Sept. 11. Here are the hoax letter
and the real letters:

HOAX LETTER

Note that the hoax
envelope has a regular 34 cent stamp, while the Brokaw envelope is a pre-stamped
Post Office envelope. In addition to the differences illustrated
in the graphic, notice the difference in the letter S. Note that
the hoax letter does a much better job of writing in a straight line.
Note that the writer of the hoax letter has a habit of not connecting strokes
- (the M in MR, the incomplete letter Os, the A in HOWARD, etc.).
Note that the hoaxer puts a dash between the city and state and a period
after the abbreviation of the state. Note that the hoaxer completes
his the letter Os on the middle of the right side, while the writer of
the anthrax letter completes his Os on the left side. Note that the
hoaxer does not use serifs on the number 1, while the anthrax mailer
does. Note that the hoaxer does NOT write the first letter of words
larger than the others if the word is normally capitalized.

The hoaxer probably
wrote his letter with his left hand, while being right handed. There
is a definite unsteadiness to the handwriting (as if the writer had palsy).
The writer of the anthrax letters shows no sign of having been written
with the wrong hand.

No one believes
that both of these letters were written by the same person, and they are
shown here primarily to demonstrate how very different handwriting can
be even when a person is writing in all capitals. In addition, because
the hoax letter was mailed before it was known that someone was actually
sending out anthrax letters, it demonstrates how ready some people may
be to use any news story as an excuse to send out hoax letters. It
appears that the hoax letter was mailed a few days after the news broke
in
Florida that Bob Stevens had anthrax. The hoaxer wasted
no time in crawling out from under his rock to take advantage of the situation
for his own personal reasons. "Howard Toxler ... 1st case of disease
now blow away this dust so you see how the real thing flys. Oklahoma-Ryder
Truck! Skyway bridge-18 wheels." certainly doesn't sound like an Al Qaeda
threat.

In another hoax
anthrax case at about the same time, a man in Indianapolis was arrested
for sending three threatening hoax anthrax letters: "one to Defense Security
Service, a component of the Department of Defense located in Indianapolis;
one to the Indianapolis office of the FBI; and a third to the office of
COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) in Washington, D.C. Each letter
contained the threat, "You die now" and a white powdery substance."
He was released on bond and has since disappeared. Click HERE
for details.

In another hoax
case, a Massachusetts grandmother mailed 18 threatening hoax letters to
the Massachusetts State Attorney General, 6 of them containing white powder.
The letters arrived at their destinations between Oct. 22 and Dec. 6, 2001.
Details of the case are HERE.

Here's a quote from
Richard Preston's book "The Demon In The Freezer" that gives a good indication
of just how many hoaxes there were prior to 9-11:

"[David Lee] Wilson was head of the [FBI's] HMRU [Hazardous
Materials Response Unit] between 1997 and 2000, and during those years
the number of credible bioterror threats or incidents rose dramatically,
up to roughly 200 per year, or one biological threat every couple of days.
Most of them were anthrax hoaxes."

THE
SNIPER CASE

Apparently
because of the timing of the Maryland Sniper cases, and the fact that John
Allen Muhammad is a coverted Muslim, and the fact that Lee Malvo has some
connections to Florida and New Jersey, some people believe that there might
be a connection to the anthrax cases.

While
I find no reason to believe such a thing - because the snipers had no known
access to anthrax, much less the expertise or facilities to refine it -
the fact that Lee Malvo tended to write in all block letters provides us
with a different handwriting example to analyze. Here is a sample
of Lee Malvo's handwriting:

Note
that Lee Malvo does not write R's the way the anthrax letter writer
wrote his R's. It's
difficult to describe in words, but the differences can be seen below:A quick glance
shows not only the difference in the R, but also in the G, the I and the
M. The anthrax letter writer did not use serifs on the letter I,
Lee Malvo does. The anthrax letter writer wrote his M's with the
central V going all the way down to the base, Lee Malvo doesn't. This
is a very good illustration of how block writing can differ greatly
from one person to another.

OTHER
HOAX CASES

Other hoax cases
from the time of the anthrax mailings are described in the following articles: